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[It came from the PUG]: No one knows the way back from the graveyard!

So the instance in question last week was Blood Furnace – I’ve been finally levelling my bank alt. (Hurrah!) Things were going well, the tank was getting more and more confident with every pull. We killed a boss and kept going. Then the tank got a bit over-confident, pulled too many groups at a time … and we wiped. The tank said, “Haha, oops sorry” … and then left.

But why? It was a decent group, we could have gone back in, pulled that room more smartly and cleared the instance. There was no rage quit.

My guess is that it is because the run back to Blood Furnace from the nearest graveyard is not only a long one, but most people don’t even know the way anyway. And once everyone realises that most people don’t know the way, they can mentally add up the extra delay in their heads and do the maths themselves. Even with more mellow groups in the past, I have had to offer to show people the way back from the graveyard. So if you wipe in one of those instances, you potentially have a long and tedious wait, especially if one of the other guys fails to mention that they don’t know the way.

I don’t have major issues myself with running back. At least you get to see a bit of the world and know where the instance is supposed to actually be compared to everywhere else. But the game very clearly failed in this case at making sure that players will know the graveyard run before they enter an instance for the first time (ie. when you might expect to wipe.) Other instances are even worse – the run back to Blackrock Depths is notoriously long, even if you do know the way.

I do blame the group for being wimps and not even discussing the problem. It might be that everyone actually did know the way back. But I miss the LOTRO solution which is that when you release from an instance, you reappear just by the entrance.

19 thoughts on “[It came from the PUG]: No one knows the way back from the graveyard!”

Oh my, I’ve lost the most bank alts that way. There always seems to come a point where I have so much levelling and crafting cruft on my bank alt that I decide to roll up a bank alt to take care of all of the actual bank alt items that my Not Quite A Bank Alt Anymore no longer has room to carry. Then I look at the freshly minted bank alt and think that it’s quite a cool race/class combination, and start levelling it a bit…

LotRO’s instance resurrection system is indeed most splendid, although it does occasionally lead to somewhat comical instance runs, especially because LotRO has some lovely short one-or-two-room instances. One example is the School at Tham Mírdain (or perhaps the library, I always get the two confused), where our group had difficulty clearing the first courtyard room, and so every time one of us died we had about four steps to take before we were back in the fight. Victory through attrition was perhaps not quite what Turbine had in mind, although we paid the price when we got back to camp and had to pay our repair bills. Ouch.

I feel as though the bank alt had been sadly watching the comings and going of the rich, famous adventurers from it’s humble little desk job in ((city of your choice)). And then one day it sneaked out to seek its fortune ….

If only one of my bank alts wanted to be an engineer instead so that they could invent unlimited bag slots.

I would much prefer an AddOn which would automatically remove me from group when the DPS intentionally pulls more mobs.

I don’t understand what motivates DPSers who had to wait 20 – 40 minutes for a group to form to continue pulling trash after I posted the “rules” at the beginning of the run and again, after the first time he or she intentionally pulled a group.

I hope these DPSers get a wake-up call in Cataclysm if CC is indeed needed.

What is even more surprising is some of the other graveyard runs people have asked about. I have had to escort quite a few people from the rez point back into Wailing Caverns now. The worst one was the ICC instances though. I first played them under LFD when they all came out together and everytime I died I could never find my way back in. Good job the characters I am playing atm are a long way from there.

I think Wailing Caverns is the worst offender. Not only is it a long run back to the instance, but if you wipe down in the tunnels, forget about it. It’s confusing even if you know your way through, and since you can bypass some of the trash, its not uncommon to see someone start back, then die again on their way.

In cataclysm, you will have to “discover” the entrance to the instance before you can queue for it. That kinda kills RFC for Alliance, and probably Deadmines for Horde.

I was in an instance and we wiped. No one left, but one guy did not know the way back (I was not surprised that it was a DK) and his solution was to rez at the graveyard and port back in.

My solution would be to look at a few “instances” in the game where cross-server activities have been happening for a while. PvP. If you die, you wait 30 seconds and rez. There should be a spirit healer at the entrance to every instance.

Granted that this could lead to “zerging” in some instances, VH and ToC come to mind real fast. To prevent this, make the timer wait until combat ends. After the wipe, poof, you are right back in.

Worst part of the LFG system is waiting 30+ minutes to get into a group, wipe before the first boss, and have the group fall apart and have to start all over again.

Least favorite corpse run: Black Fathom Deep
The graveyard is in an entirely different glubbernuggin zone, and ya has to know ta first go around the mountains, and thens dive under the walls. Is a looong run ta begin with, and always some poor bugger what don’t know the way. Done takes ferevers ta recover.

ICC be a pain too, if someone don’t know the trick. I means, the minimap arrow points ya right to an instance portal, it just happens ta be the wrong dang instance. Bad design, that.

This is, in my opinion, one of the really major unarguable downfalls of the Dungeon Finder. We can argue our way around the other downsides, such as the lack of community, the speedy runs, etc, but those are all subjective. This is objectively a bad thing.

Its also a bit of a pang of nostalgia, as I imagine the only people who wouldn’t know the way to Blood Furnace are people who never played during The Burning Crusade, as it was nearly impossible to level through Outland and not do Blood Furnace at least once, if not several times. It had three awesome XP quests, with two solid quest rewards, plus a bunch of decent blue loot for levelling players. Now, though, people blitz through Outland in heirlooms, so none of the gear is of much use, they use the Dungeon Finder if they do dungeons at all, and as such they never have the fun of running from Thrallmar across that big bridge, up the wooden tower, across another bridge, turn the corner, and there’s Blood Furnace.
And even on the odd chance that they do know where Blood Furnace’s entrance is, now that you can fly from level 60, they probably fly to it, and as such have no dea how to get there by land.

However, I’m not silly enough to not recognise that my longing for those days is motivated purely by rose-coloured glasses. Things have improved for the better in Wrath, and while there are things I miss, I’m fairly sure its nostalgia thats making me miss them and not any true sort of objective quality loss.

Take the Illidan fight for example…I miss that fight a lot, because I was a flame tank, and it was one of the few opportunites that a good tank got, to set them apart from the rabble of “lol i has sheild i tank” tanks that will always be around. However, loooking objectively at it, the Illidan fight was quite poor design. Five phases, one of which REQUIRED two tanks with specific gear sets, neither of whom would do anything else for phase 1, 3, 4, or 5. Terrible fight design when you look at the fantastic fights we have in Wrath, like Malygos, Yogg-Saron, Mimiron, Algalon, Anub’Arak, The Lich King, and probably some other fights in ICC that I haven’t done enough times yet to know how good they are.

As a guy whose guild was always a social guild without any scheduled runs, I PUGged a lot. This sort of behavior is part of the reason I’m not playing WoW now. It kills the game. Not fun.

Even Madden and NCAA online have penalties for disconnections. There should be some sort of penalty in WoW. I don’t care if it’s 200g per player or what, but it should happen. If you lose your net connection, I’m tempted to say it’s just too bad. If you’re lagging, you should have some option, and the party should certainly be able to vote to allow a drop, but disconnections, especially ones after a full party wipe, should be penalized in-game in a way that benefits those who stick around.